Lulu (opera)

Lulu (composed from 1929–1935, premièred incomplete in 1937 and complete in 1979) is an opera in three acts by the composer Alban Berg. The German-language libretto was adapted by Berg himself from Frank Wedekind's two Lulu plays, Erdgeist (Earth Spirit, 1895) and Die Büchse der Pandora (Pandora's Box, 1904). Berg died before completing the third and final act, and in the following decades, the opera was typically performed incomplete. Since its publication in 1979, however, the Friedrich Cerha orchestration has become popular. Theodor W. Adorno wrote "The opera Lulu is one of those works that reveals the extent of its quality the longer and more deeply one immerses oneself in it."

Berg was familiar with Wedekind's Erdgeist by 1903, when he was nineteen. He also saw Die Büchse der Pandora in 1905 in a production by Karl Kraus on 29 May, and was inspired by the introductory speech that Kraus delivered on that occasion. In Wedekind's two Lulu plays, now often performed together under that title, Erdgeist forms the basis for the act 1 and act 2, scene 1 of the opera culminating in her shooting Dr. Schön, while Die Büchse der Pandora forms the basis for the rest of act 2 and act 3, Lulu's imprisonment, escape and subsequent decline and murder.

Berg did not begin work on Lulu until 1929, after he had completed his other opera, Wozzeck. Thanks to Wozzeck's success Berg had the economic security that enabled him to embark on a second opera. However, life for the musical world was becoming increasingly difficult in the 1930s both in Vienna and Germany due to the rising tide of antisemitism and the Nazi cultural ideology that denounced modernity. Even to have an association with someone who was Jewish could lead to denunciation, and Berg's "crime" was to have studied with the Jewish composer Arnold Schoenberg.Wozzeck's success was short lived as theatre after theatre succumbed to political pressure and refused to produce it, Erich Kleiber's 30 November 1932 production being the last, while sets and scenery were systematically destroyed.Wozzeck was also banned in the Soviet Union as "bourgeois". Berg found that opportunities for his work to be performed in Germany were becoming rare, and in September 1935 his music was proscribed as Entartete Musik (degenerate music), under the label Kulturbolschewismus (Cultural Bolshevism).

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